Weekly Report for Week Ending August 24, 2000

The LIGO Executive Committee Agenda for Monday  August 28, 2000 will be:
 (Meeting time: 10:30 am Pacific Time)

Open meeting 10:30 - 11:30

1. Announcements
2. LSC Issues (Weiss)
3. Comments on Weekly Report
4. WBS 1 LIGO I Construction (Lindquist)
• Field Change Orders/Contingency Liens/Change Requests
5. WBS 2 LIGO Lab Operations
• Administration (Lindquist)
• Sites (Raab, Coles, Shoemaker, Sanders)
• Detector (Whitcomb, Coyne)
• Campus Research Facilities (Weinstein (40 Meter), Libbrecht (TNI), Zucker(LASTI))
• Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)
6. WBS 3 and 4  Advanced R&D and LIGO II (Sanders)

Special Items:

Special Announcements:

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/LIGO_web/sidebar/roster.html

It  is updated 2 to 3 times per month. Please use it in lieu of any paper rosters you may possess and use it instead of requesting information from the administrative staff.   -  GHS

Weekly Report Highlights
 
 

LSC Issues (Weiss)

No report this week.

LIGO I Construction/LIGO Laboratory Administration (Lindquist)

WBS 1.2 LIGO Operations--Administration

LIGO Weekly Site Telecon (Lindquist)

• The site telecon on August 24, 2000 focused on the cost vs. budget numbers as of the end of July 2000.  The list of current actions revised to reflect open actions assigned through August 24, 2000 may be found at ACTION LIST.

From: Ed Chargois <chargois_e@ligo.caltech.edu>

• Submitted a letter to the Caltech Insurance representative requesting Insurance certificates be issued for each vehicle utilized at the Livingston and  Hanford Observatories.
• Provided  the Caltech's Property Representative with a copy of the completed LIGO property Inventory.
• Property meeting was held and a tentative agreement  was made, between LIGO and Caltech's Property Representatives, that no Caltech Property Tags will be placed on any LIGO  property, this includes both Observatories. [LIGO tags will be used instead --pel]

>From: Linda Turner - turner@ligo.caltech.edu>

Web pages for the DCC give simple how-to's for document numbering, easy access to the latest on-line documents, and search capabilities for the DCC database.Take a look. . .

 ACTIVITY HIGHLIGHTS

• No report this week.

• No report this week.

From: Esther Cunningham <esther@ligo.caltech.edu>

Press here for ACCOUNTS PAYABLE HISTORY DATA.

From: "Brambila, Ruth" <Ruth.Brambila@caltech.edu>

No report this week.

From: Florence Kaufman <fkaufman@ligo.caltech.edu>

• Worked with Mark Coles and Bonnie Wascom in identifying Livingston charges that had either been misclassified to the incorrect Task # or to the wrong Expenditure Type.  Correcting entries will be submitted by Bonnie.
• Met with Nancy Narasaki from Property Accounting and provided her with a preliminary list of charges that need to be reclassified from Caltech-Owned to Government Owned Equipment.  Determination will need to be made as to whether these proposed reclassifications can be made just at the level of Caltech financial reporting only or whether LIGO reporting requirements necessitate actually making the entries in the Oracle financial systems.
• Have been working with Federal Accounting to determine why the entries submitted in June for reclassification of certain expenditures from Construction to Operations have not yet been made in Oracle.

From: irena@ligo.caltech.edu (Irena Petrac)

• No report this week.

From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>

• The proposed lease for storage space in Livingston has hit a legal snag,  The attorney for the Town of Livingston wants the lease to be for real property, while our attorney, Sandy Pool, wants it to be for passive storage space.  Discussions are ongoing to try and resolve this issue.

Dorothy Lloyd

• Dorothy is on vacation for three weeks.

• Scanned signed documents to appear on the MOU/LSC webpage, formatted from email progress report from Texas-Brownsville; submitted for web page. Distributed minutes to CCB of 8/1/00. Did some travel documents. Reconciled Pcard purchases, did site trip updates.
• On-going activities: requisitions for D. Lloyd while she's on vacation, update LIGO personnel roster (almost done), coordinate with the telephone office for alpha-numeric pagers.

• Continue to worked with a number of outside vendors and have been able to arrange with them to accept my P-Card for payment of non-card holder's expenses. With these expenses now being pre-paid for the traveler, either by his/her P-Card or mine, I am now issuing Advance Checks (written by me) to the traveler for per diem and miscellaneous. We are no longer dependent on Travel Audit for Advance Checks and have been able to get checks in the traveler's hands almost immediately. With Criselda's continued fantastic help we're working out the kinks as we go. I have completed the first Expense Report using the new form Travel Audit and I have worked up for these CP trips. As the new system continues you will see fewer and fewer T numbers. The new system uses CP numbers.
• Started six (6) new trips this past week. There is only one additional (1) new trip pending completion of travel arrangements at this time.
• The SURF Students have departed for their home universities and have started to send in their receipts for reimbursement where appropriate.
• Worked on, and completed twenty-six (26) Expense Reports. Rita was able to complete twelve (12) reports and has no additional ones to work on at this time. I have one (1) Expense Report being held that requires a check from the Traveler before processing can be completed. Due to meetings, training and preparations for the new P-Card Program I continue to be backed up on Expense Reports at the present time. I have thirty-nine (39) outstanding reports at the present time.
• Prepared the Travel/Vacation Itinerary for the Week of August 21, 2000. Performed normal recording and filing associated with Travel and Reimbursement. Worked on several problem issues with Travel Audit. Also performed miscellaneous duties as requested by various members of the LIGO Project here at Caltech as well as from members of the staffs of each of the two (2) sites. I continue to do MIT's travel to the sites for installation activities and also to assist them wherever possible.

• Dealt with personnel issues. That means dealing with HR in many cases. You should be glad you don't have to deal with HR directly. You should be glad that there is someone running interference for you. You should be delighted that I have such a calm and unassuming demeanor and can patiently deal with the people who deal with Caltech people.
• Worked on Phil's chart of productive versus non-productive hours for LIGO planning. I'm hoping this was productive.
• I will be on vacation for a week. Yippee.

Advanced LIGO (Frey, Petrac)

Progress Period from 8.11 to 8.24

Accomplishments:

• Held Advanced LIGO Project Controls meeting with Gary.  Focus of meeting was performing a funding analysis for Advanced LIGO.
• Started the funding analysis exercise.  Held meetings with Dennis Coyne, Garilynn B., and Janeen H..
• Attended weekly status meeting for Advanced LIGO Proposal.  Every Tuesday at 9:30am at SCR.
• Proposal plan development for Advanced LIGO and Operations continues.
• Issued data requests for progress data as of 8.18.00 and 8.25, that is due the following respective Friday.
• Progress as of 8.11.00 and 8.18.00 was processed and posted.
• Project Plan for the 40-Meter Lab Upgrade continues.
• Attended meeting on Wednesday where scope and schedule issues were better defined.
• Issued data requests for progress data as of 8.18.00 and 8.25.00, that is due the following respective Friday.
• Updated the plan with progress as of 8.11.00 and 8.18.00, provided by Peter King and Fred Asiri.  Posted to site.
• Planning process for the LASTI project at MIT is in progress.
• 3rd iteration is pending by David.
• Attended LSC meetings at Hanford Observatory.
• Met with Barry Barish and discussed Advanced LIGO.
• Development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guidebook continues.  Continuing to write section on data dictionaries.
• Project Web Site for posting schedule and progress related data continues to be updated with the latest and greatest.
• See http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~tfrey/index.html

• Next weekly meeting will be Monday afternoon August 28 from 1 to 3pm regarding the planning and control of the Advanced LIGO proposal development.
• Will hold any required meeting to discuss the funding analysis.
• Advanced LIGO Proposal Status meeting will be Tuesday morning August 22 from 9:30am to 11am.    Each system leader to discuss issues specific to he Advanced LIGO proposals.
• Will continue to follow up on the LASTI data development.
• Will continue to update the Advanced LIGO / Ops Proposal Plans and incorporate any changes.
• Will post progress report by end of day Monday with progress as of 8.25.00.
• Will issue sixth week of status data to teams.
• Will continue updating the 40 meter schedule per progress as of 8.25.00.  Will also post revised baseline schedule.
• Cost Book Tool development continues.  Will be importing data for Installation so that Dennis Coyne can proceed with estimating.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Web Site.
• Will continue the development of the Advanced LIGO Project Controls Guide Book.  Finish section on data dictionaries and start on update process.

• None to report at this time

• None to report at this time.

• No report this week.

Reports (Lindquist)

A quarterly progress report will be due shortly for the quarter ending August 31, 2000.  I am tentatively requesting inputs September 15, but we should probably discuss how best to fit this in.

The following change request has been submitted:
 

Press for the latest Contingency Needs Projection.

From: Kris Duncan <kris@ligo.caltech.edu>

• Completed input of the following change request's into the LIGO construction Performance Measurement Baseline (PMB):

 

CR-000005	Upgrade Prestabilized Lazers	$215,000
CR-000008	Cameras and Projection System for LLO	$  26,000
CR-000009	Cameras and Projection System for LHO	$  26,000

• Continued work on the July LIGO CSSR.  Ran draft cost performance reports and SPA graphs for review.
• Continued work on the Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) for month end July 2000.
• Initiated work on the August 2000 NSF Quarterly Report..

• Reports for Construction and Advanced R&D have been published on the web.  We have used a new format.  Comments are requested.
• The financial reports on the web provide supporting detail.

http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~fireport
http://docuserv.ligo.caltech.edu/~finance

From: Irena Petrac <irena@ligo.caltech.edu>

No report this week.

From: Ed Jasnow <jasnow@ligo.caltech.edu>

The schedule for the Livingston Staging Building has been finalized.   The Invitation for Bid will be issued on September 7,  the job walk will be held on September 21, and the bid opening will be on October 12.   Advertising for this project will be put in the Baton Rouge and New Orleans newspapers next week.

Quality/Safety (Tyler)

• During the past week, Messrs. Scislowicz, Zydowicz and Tyler conducted a safety audit of the Hanford site. The audit included the daily work permit meeting, subsequent laser safety incident discussion, and meeting with Otto Matherny to review last years safety audit status. Accompanied by Otto Matherny, a safety "inspection" was done of the OSB, LVEA and corner station support buildings. Only a few minor safety concerns were noted.
• The team also interviewed several of the site staff members to ascertain the extent of a safety "culture" and awareness of site safety related processes and procedures. The team is pleased to report that the persons interviewed exhibited very good safety awareness and knowledge.
• The Hanford site safety processes/procedures seem to be working well. Major part of the site safety success is the "safety education/process"  that is an important part of the daily work permit and weekly safety meetings.
• An audit report is being prepared.

LIGO Hanford Observatory (LHO) Operations (Raab)

General Items:
--------------
(F. Raab)

Staging activities continue for installation of the WA4K.
 

Optics:
---------------------
(D. Cook)

Most of this week has been dedicated to the preparations needed for the 4K
IFO installations. Assembling the optical lever reciever and transmitter
boxes, finishing out the transmission monitor boxes. Betsy is getting the
COS components built up and ready for bench alignments as well as helping
with COC processing and staging. I have been working with L. Jones to
assemble two detailed 4k installation specification documents to be used to
coordinate the 4k IFO installation. One for the end stations and one for
the corner station. This will help to organize tasks as we will be
installing all the COC, COS, IOO, componets as well as the support
equipment like the optical levers and transmission monitors, the beam dumps
and baffles during the same vacuum incursion. It is a check list to track
the progress of each step of the installation including the preliminary
testing of equipment etc. Assisted B.Butler in setting up a test to measure
the effects of the IR light on the 'new' vs 'old' OSEMs. He has posted the
results on the e-log (The new OSEMs are ~2000 times less sensitive to
1064nM IR).
 
 

LIGO Livingston Observatory (LLO) Operations (Coles)

OPTICS/COC/SEI INSTALLATION: Mark Guenther has spent the last week here debugging CAS software, and implementing changes that Hytec suggested. We have successfully run all 3 BSC CAS systems through a battery of tests, and we feel comfortable using the system, although an issue concerning the lower limit to the acceleration rate remains unresolved. (Thanks to Mark and Joe Hanson working both days last weekend!!) We installed high resolution position indicator on each axis of the Parker translation slides, and have performed preliminary characterization measurements. During the CAS testing, we have been using a loaned LDS-1000 laser autocollimator, in conjunction with our own unit which is a component of the IAS alignment setup. We note that each instrument yields a slightly different reading when placed in identical situations and we are investigating why. (Jonathan Kern)

Vacuum: Liquid nitrogen tanks at LLO are now full in preparation for check out of the cryo-pump controls.

Community Relations: Approximately 60 members of the Gulf Coast Section of the IEEE toured LLO this week.
 

MIT (Shoemaker)

Covered elsewhere.

Caltech (Sanders)

Covered elsewhere.

Detector/Technical Support (Whitcomb, Coyne)

See also the daily electronic logs for the installation and commissioning activities:
Hanford Detector Log
Livingston Detector Log

1.1 LHO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

2km Commissioning

The things we found to be important in acquiring the PRM+ARM lock were:

• careful alignment (both to maximize coupling and minimize misalignment driven fluctuations)
• setting damping gains (low on undriven optics [esp. BS] to minimize 1 micron light coupling to the OSEMs, and moderate on driven optic [ITMX, ITMY] to prevent oscillations driven by length to angle coupling)
• exploring servo gain space

• measured closed-loop gains of all three servo loops
• diagonalized the actuation matrix to ensure pure L and l drives
• measured optical sensing matrix for all 3 sensors (reflection,  anti-symmetric, pick-off ports) and tuned demodulation phases to best separate the degrees of freedom in this matrix

We were also able to image the beam spot on the ETMs using the frame-grabber.  Both spots seemed to be well centered on the optics. We expect this method to allow centering to within a centimeter or less.

LSC Software

• Completed and installed latest LSC software, which fixed Pentek ADC/DAC module sync problems and supports latest lock acquisition scheme.  At some point, the ASC code needs to be updated with the same time sync fixes and communication compatibility with LSC to end stations processors.
• Began work on next mod request for LSC code ie allow operators to change servo filter coefficients without system recompile or shutdown. There are also requests in for additional operator control parameters and DAQ channels.  The latter will require recompilation of all DAQ code, as it would force LSC DAQ beyond its present reflected memory boundaries, so the memory map will need to be changed to provide more space.

DAQ Software

Suspension Controls

Input Optics

• MC3: balanced (within +/- 0.1 mrad), all attachments glued, ready for vacuum bake.
• MC1, MC2, SM, MMT1: all magnets glued, ready for balancing.
• MMT2: cleaned, to be glued.
• 10 DLC mounts for 2" in-vacuum steering mirrors are assembled.
• 4 SOS suspension towers are complete, 2 more are partially compete.

Core Optics Support (COS)

• ETM Telescope: 4k ETM Telescopes are assembled and awaiting installation.
• IO Baffle: 4k IO Baffle frame support has been reworked and rebaked, awaiting assembly. The reworked glass has arrived safely and is in the vacuum bake oven queue.
• Beam Dumps: 2k Cavity Beam Dump Vertical tubes (one each for BSC 7 and BSC 8) are being reworked - they will not be installed during the upcoming installation of the 4k hardware in the LVEA. Their installation is TBD.
• PO/APS Telescope: 4k PO Telescopes are "mostly" assembled and waiting for some final checks and bench alignment by Ken Mailand in a few weeks.4k APS Telescope Baffle frame has been reworked and is in the vacuum bake oven queue; we are waiting for the arrival of APS Telescope Baffle bottom glass.
• Faraday Isolator: 4k Faraday Isolator still needs assembly and alignment.

Optical Levers

PEM Cosmic Ray Detector

The readout electronics is currently being assembled, with signal digitization to occur in rack 1x5. Data will be bundled in events triggered by large cosmic ray showers, with each event consisting of pulse height and time information.

LIGO-TriNet seismic stations

1.2 LLO INSTALLATION & COMMISSIONING

Commissioning

We have made arrangements to continue our PEM audit into a second phase, without the help of UT Brownsville students. Doug Lormand will continue to work on this project; he will be assisted on a part-time basis by LSU undergrad Laura Schlecht.

Input  Optics

Measured absolute RFAM levels on the beam from the EOMS.  After optimization, all are dI/I < 5 X 10^-6 of carrier.  The New Focus 1811 RPFDs saturate at ~ 50 uW of input power, so shot noise and any frequency noise riding around the sidebands is below the noise floor of the measurement.  We are currently putting in a high power RFPD to get the shot noise up to a level where we can measure it

DAQ/LSC Software

• Upgrade DAQ to V3.0.
• Setup 4 new Sun stations and add 300GByte drive to Framebuilder (trenddata storage).
• Pull down latest EPICS software changes from Hanford.
• Complete ASC installation.

New OSEM Heads

###SEW: Late update.  With the problems in the alignment of the core optics delaying the closure of the vacuum system, it looks like we will have the opportunity to put the new OSEMs on at least two of the optics in the LVEA.  We will attempt this unless it results in unacceptable delays.

Core Optics Support (COS)

• HAM3 Installation: The ITMy telescope and optical train alignment is awaiting re-alignment of the BS and ITMy.
• Arm Cavity Baffle: The ETMx-arm cavity baffle is being assembled.
• PO Mirror: The ITMy PO mirror alignment is awaiting re-alignment of the BS and ITMy mirror.
• Beam Dumps: The beam dumps are awaiting final positioning after the BS and ITMy mirrors are re-aligned.
• IO Baffle: The aluminum frame is being baked. One of the new glass panels broke during shipment from Hydratech; a replacement panel is being fabricated and is expected to arrive at LHO by 9/1.

PSL

LIGO-TriNet seismic stations

Keisha Williams finished her term with nice results and paper.

2.0 Other Engineering and Scientific Activities

2.1 Design/Analysis/Fab

PSL

Measurements characterizing the modified current shunt have been completed.

Modulated OSEM Design

Two prototype boards of the supressed carrier version of the circuit are stuffed and testing should begin by 8/24. Once bench tests at Caltech are complete a board will be sent to LHO for testing. The other board will be sent to Rai at LLO for additional testing.

New OSEM Heads

Digital Suspensions

Data Monitoring Tool

I also finished updated the trend generation class to allow trending of multiple channels in a single trend frame and automatic writing of the trend frames. I then used this in a new program that monitors the time jitter of the ADC clocks relative to the GPS time reference. I found that the measured timing jitter is 50ns. Several effects (e.g. basline noise) have not been corrected and may contribute to the measured jitter. Rolf says that a <100ns jitter is expected of the GPS time stamp, so the measurement seems to be sufficiently precise.

Global Diagnostics

2.2 Issues Concerns

40 Meter Interferometer (Weinstein)

• 40 m Lab Rehab:
• Steve Vass and Dennis Ugolini have moved us out of the "old" control room, into the North Annex room. Desks, bookcases, computers, etc, have all been moved.
• The contractor work there is not quite complete, and electrical work remains. Fred Asiri is ordering two isolation transformers.
• The contractor is slated to begin bringing down the wall between the old control room and the main IFO hall next week. We're ready for them.
• They're also starting on enclosing the entrance area, so we'll be entering the lab from the NW corner doors for the next little while.
• There's be a lot of mess, so we've covered up the IFO with plastic, and are abandoning normal clean room procedures for a while.
• All five SURF students have completed their projects, and gave talks at Hanford and at Caltech. Two have already written their final papers. They all did very excellent work!
• Ivica Stevanovic did a very thorough analysis of the LIGO suspension controllers (both analog and digital versions, for LOS and SOS suspensions). His report will be a real resource! He also did excellent work helping Dennis Ugolini wire up the new vacuum control system, and helping Steve Vass plumb up the output optic chamber for test pumpdown and RGA measurement.
• Jit Chauhan made some progress in installing the code required to run GDS, diag, dmt, DataViewer, GRASP, etc.
• Lisa Goggin specified all the cavity optics for the 40m IFO and input optics (MC, MMTs).
• Ted Jou used the Twiddle package to come up with a robust and realizable LSC control scheme for the dual-recycled 40m IFO. He is currently updating it for the new control scheme unveiled at the LSC meeting.
• Brian Kappus used the ModalModel package to come up with a robust and realizable WFS alignment control scheme for the dual-recycled 40m IFO (and for LIGO II).
• We had a meeting of the 40m Technical Advisory Committee at the LSC meeting in Hanford, 8/16/00. Transparencies shown by AJW are in G000194-00.pdf. These include the minutes of the meeting (on pages 39-40). Pages 41-60 describe the work of Ted Jou and Brian Kappus (see above). Amongst the outcomes of this meeting were tentative decisions:
• Key elements of the newly proposed LIGO II control scheme can be prototyped with good fidelity at the 40m, including: PM RF sidebands at low (9MHz) and high (180MHz) frequencies (the smaller PRC length means that the 40m would need higher RF frequencies; 36MHz instead of 9MHz. So, the separation between l_PRC and l_SRC will be less robust, but adequate.) Offset locking of the arm cavities. DC-sensing of the GW signal. Use of a small monolithic output MC. AJW and Ted Jou are modeling this scheme at the 40m with Twiddle, with help from Jim Mason.
• Implement the STACIS active isolators on the test mass chamber stacks.
• Use flat ITM mirrors, rather than symmetric arm cavities.
• Use more massive test masses (1.5 kg instead of the 0.25 kg SOS test masses) in order to reduce the effect of attachments on the Q of the test masses, and thus, on their internal thermal noise.
• Proceed!
• Since then, we had another meeting with the relevant LIGO engineers, on 8/23/00. These transparencies were shown by AJW.
• Larry Jones is on board to manage the installation of the STACIS active isolation system (with Steve Vass), and he's already made lots of progress. He expects that most of the work could be done during October and November. AJW will obtain some additional technical information from the STACIS manufacturers (TMC), then we'll order them.
• Garilynn Billingsley will procure, process, and measure the suspended optic glass, polishing, and coatings. She's working to keep the schedule, from beginning to end, to less than a year. AJW will finalize the specs with her within the next 2 weeks.
• Janeen Romie will engineer the suspensions required for the larger (1.5 kg) test masses, and will begin to procure the parts (including OSEMS) for all 3" SOS's (for the 3 mode cleaner optics, the PRM, SRM, and BS) and for the four 4" scaled-SOS's (for the four test masses).
• Mike Smith will be available starting December to refine and finalize the optical layout, and procure all the in-vacuum non-suspended components, all the optical lever lasers and telescopes, and all the ISC table optics. He'll also do an analysis of scattered light, to see how it propagates to the GW signal.
• Peter King and Rich Abbott will deliver the PSL in stages, beginning in the winter.
• AJW and Rick Karwoski will assemble a complete list of CDS electronics components that would be required for control, monitoring, and DAQ for a full dual-recycled 40m IFO, by naively extrapolating from LIGO I. In the meantime, we hope that deeper thought will go in to what changes would be required for LIGO II.
• Dennis Ugolini continues to assemble the new vacuum control system hardware, despite all the chaos in the lab. He has wired up all the sense lines from the valves and pumps, and can read them into EPICS. Remaining task: redo all the valve relays (5volts -> 24 volts) so they can be controlled by the new system. He needs tech help! If he gets it, he should be ready for a complete system test in the next couple of weeks.
• The output optic chamber is continuing to be pumped on, now by a big ion pump. RGA scans are made periodically. Total pressure is ~1e-7 torr; dropping very slowly.
• Rick Karwoski is at Hanford.

Minutes of the third meeting of the
40 Meter Interferometer Technical Advisory Committee
Wednesday, August 16, 2000, LSC meeting at LHO.
 

Ken Strain (chair)    kstrain@physics.gla.ac.uk +44 141 330 5884
Minutes by Alan Weinstein, ajw@caltech.edu,         626-395-6682

- Ken Strain gave a brief resume of the newly proposed
  LIGO-II control scheme
  (I wasn't taking notes, so I can't do it justice)

- Ken went on to describe plans for a quick test of this scheme
  at Glasgow 10m. (ditto).

- AJW presented a host of transparencies (see
  http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/~ajw/G000194-00.pdf ).

  - Re-statement of objectives of the upgrade,
    posing the question of whether the control system risk
    is high enough to warrant 40m upgrade effort.

    ** There were very few comments made!
       AJW remains uncomfortable,
       and concerned about drumming up LSC interest/participation.
 

  - ** All of the key elements of the
    newly proposed LIGO-II control scheme
    can most likely be prototyped at the 40m
    in a straightforward and extrapolatable way.
    The smaller PRC at the 40m makes the control matrix
    a bit less diagonal, but do-able.
 

  - recent activity (dismantling, building rehab,
    vacuum control system, output chamber & seismic stack) described.
 

  - Preliminary optical layout presented, including 12m mode cleaner,
    and fixed steering mirrors and MMT lenses.
 

    ** AJW requested help/advice in analyzing noise produced
    by these fixed elements; no volunteers.
 

  - Need for active seismic isolation (STACIS) addressed.
 

    ** No one offered any wisdom on the analysis (MTTL,
       minimum frequency for evaluating rms motion, etc).
    ** It comes down to whether the installation
       can be effectively and safely managed.
       If Larry Jones says he can do it, we'll do it!
 

  - Question raised as to appropriate size of core optics
    (3", 0.25 kg vs 4", 1.56 kg).
    (Use 3" SOS optics for MMT1-3, RM, BS, SM).
 

    ** Still under debate, advice welcome!
 

  - Question raised as to choice of flat ITMs or symmetric arms.
 

    ** opinions favored flat ITMs. OK!
 

  - Very brief mention of designs for LSC and ASC,
    in the context of Jim Mason's control scheme.
    Designs will be updated for the new proposed LIGO II control scheme.
 

_______________________________
OK, now here's AJW's reconstruction
of the main features of the newly proposed LIGO-II control scheme,
as described by Ken Strain and Peter Fritchel:
 

  - phase-modulated sidebands placed before a 16.5 m mode cleaner
    at 9 MHz and at 180 MHz
    - two Pockels cells in series
    - parasitic modulations at 171 and 189 are not a problem...
    - some control signals using balanced RF sidebands
      cancel each other when operated in RSE mode,
      but only one sideband is used when detuned,
      so these control signals are present.
  - small Michelson l- asymmetry to put 180MHz on a bright fringe
    out the asymmetric port, while only a small amount of 9 MHz
    goes there.
  - beats between 9 and 180 (double-demodulated)
    gives clean separation between l+ and ls DOF.
  - Other DOF (L+, L-, l-) derived in the usual way.
  - GW signal to be obtained using DC locking:
    - let some carrier light come out the dark port, either by:
      - take arms slightly out of resonance in opposite directions
      - tiny (additional) Michelson l- asymmetry to let carrier out
      - They like the fist approach better; not sure why
    - beat carrier against signal sidebands to get GW signal
    - get rid of all RF signals with a short output mode cleaner
      (after picking the light off to control ls, L-)
    - Since only low-noise, arm-filtered light is used,
      extracting the signal at DC is not too noisy.

Thermal Noise Interferometer (Libbrecht)

LASTI (Zucker)

LASTI (Mason, Smith, Kruzel, MacInnis, Shoemaker, Zucker)
---------------------------------------------------------
SEI installation prep (Smith):
The pier anchor holes are marked on two of the three HAMS.  Ordered the
bushing tool to scarify the concrete floor.  The drill should arrive
thursday and some missing pieces needed to be ordered, which should
arrive Thursday or Friday.  Started to review the BSC pier installation
procedure and noted that we need a large jig fixture from Livingston
before the holes can even be located.  We should also be receiving the
springs(left and right epoxy and non epoxy springs from Hanford.)
 

Our bakeout vacuum oven needs to be put back together(missing scroll
pump) to bake out the spring seats.

Data Analysis and Computing (Lazzarini)

Simulation and Modeling

After sorting out various confusions, finally the reference cavity
simulation could be run with Cella-supplied time-series obtained
from mechanical simulation of this cavity.
It's found that the error signal peaks for its mechanical motion
correspond to frequency modulation with amplitudes of the order
of a few centiHertz or less.

> Noise curve

Key ingredients of noise sources, seismic, thermal and shotnoise, are
in the model now.  Biplab is working to iron out one or two oddities
in the E2E_generated noise  curves of W2K one FP system.
He will start generating noise curves for the full W2K LIGO
interferometer soon.

> Lock acquisition

Matt is working at LHO to lock the system.

Biplab is running the simulation to find the effect of the misalignment
on the Lock Acquisition.

> Thermal lensing

Hiro will start working to implement the thermal lensing in the current
optics/field implementation. This will be a minimal work to make the
simulation of the LIGO I realistic.

> alfi

An interface to edit a text with multiple lines has been developed.
This enables to edit complex mathematical expressions in function
parser modules.

> Manual

Hiro started to update the manuals, the primitive list and the getting
started.

> A new programmer coming

A new contract programmer is coming at the beginning of September.
His main task is the improvement of the simulation engine. Ed and
Bruce will still focus on GUI.

LIGO Data Analysis System

Software Systems (Blackburn)

 

 
 
 
 
 

     The issue with not being able to start multiple threads in the
     dataconditionAPI was solved this week. The command used to poll
     the state of a thread was fould to be "blocking" meaning that
     when you asked if a thread was still running, the result of asking
     was not returned until the thread finished. A polling command was
     developed for the genericAPI two years ago and available for use
     in the dataconditionAPI so it was used in place of the one that
     was developed specifically for call-chains. It immediately worked,
     allowing use to start multi-threaded call-chains across multiple
     cpus on a Sun 450. Having the multi-threaded capability did
     reveal that the handling of the results of threads lacked adequate
     indexing to associate results with issuing call-chain commands.
     This problem is being fixed in the TCL layer. Multi-threads also
     revealed a need for an association with thread-ids in the cases
     where threaded call chains throw exceptions. This will require a
     minor modification to the SWIG layer of the dataconditionAPI.

     The problem with sending multiple data sets out threaded sockets
     was also solved this week. The problem was identified as a compile
     time association with a non-thread safe malloc. The LDAS build
     scripts have been significantly improved to properly convey all
     the needed flags to build thread safe shared objects.

     The wrapperAPI documentation was modified this week to emphasis
     the indexing nature of the interface which was shadowed by the
     unfortunate use of the word template. This should make clearer
     understanding of the flexibility of the wrapperAPI.

     Work on the wrapperAPI has continued to improve its communication
     performance. It is now 150 times faster than the original version.
     I reported ~100x last week.

     We have started integrating a new dynamically loaded shared
     object for parallel searches into the wrapperAPI. The dso was
     developed over the summer as part of a SURF project and is an
     implementation to search for damped oscillators and chirps using
     simple physics models.

     The internal compiler error that was occurring when LDAS was
     being built at UWM has been traced and fixed.

     This was a very active week for giving personal tutorials on the
     LDAS system to members of the LSC visiting LIGO after the meeting
     last week. Five individuals asked for and received presentations
     which overviewed LDAS and one more is planned for next week. If
     nothing else, this past LSC meeting sparked interest in learning
     more about the LDAS design.

     Jeff Edlund (CIT Undergrad):
 

     I completed a prototype LAL implementation of the Fast Chirp Transform for
     an arbitrary number of terms.  This new implementation also allows more
     flexiblity in choosing the evaluation space.  For the next week and a half
     I'll be working on parallelizing and testing it.

 

Hardware Systems (Anderson)

 

 

Electrical re-wiring of the CIT LDAS production machine room has been
approved.

Migration from the old Ultra10 LDAS software development server (spica)
has begun to a new quad-processor E450 (ldas-sw). The new E450 was
temporarily available as dataconsparc in the CIT ldas-dev network, but
is no longer available as such.

A 933MHz PIII test beowulf node from HPC was received and is being returned
due to out-of-spec physical dimensions.

A multi-vendor GigE switch interoperability test has been organized
in conjunction with hardware from SRL at Caltech.

----- Forwarded message from Greg Mendell -----

Report on Activity at LDAS-WA

1) Detailed specifications have been received about various "enterprise
level" Tape Libraries that might be used by LDAS.  These have been used
to update drawings of the Mass Storage Room at LHO, showing the floor
plan including the location of tape libraries.  Similear drawings have
been requested from LLO.

2) An analysis has begun to investigate the requirements needed for LDAS
to write data to tape using automated scripts during upcoming
engineering runs.
 

Data Analysis  (Lazzarini)

 

 
 
 

The stochastic background paper Finn and I are writing has led to derivation of an
optimal filter for the case in which there is inter-detector background correlated noise.
This is a refinement of the optimal filter found in the current literature and includes the
cross-spectral power density in a natural way.
 

General Computing

MIT:
Checked the order that has arrived from SUN and it appears that all of the
equipment has arrived.
The SUN 450 and a number of the Ultra 10's are near completion for their s/w
installations. All are having Solaris 8 loaded on them which means a number of
the units now being used will have to be upgraded in the near future.
The video switch and UPS are setup and working but need to be installed in the
rack when it arrives.
David S. is getting a few more IP addresses for visitor usage.
A number of the old computers are being turned in and replaced with the new
Ultra 10's.

Livingston:
General Computing budget issues are being worked on.
Working on a number of maint. contracts and new purchases.

Hanford:
Nothing to report.
 

CIT:

(Sam)
- Back from vacation. Worked on a switch box and developing some web pages
concerning GC help for all the CIT LIGO users.
- Fixed a few oracle items.

(Barbara)
- Reviewed the Roster database with Elizabeth Wood and made modifications
per her comments.  Hopefully every flavor of visitor and resource can now
be accommodated.   Developed a means for adding departmental information
and printing the one-page paper directory.

(Suresh)
- Has returned from vacation. Assisted on getting 40M network back on-line.

(Lisa)
- Covering for Larry while he is at MIT.
- Setting up more Ultra 10's.
- Finishing the install of Cadence. There were some license issues such as a
missing pkg. and incorrect license sent. Hopefully, all will be resolved before
the old licenses expire.
- Worked with Larry on trouble shooting a server problem.
- Has found a number of machines (along with Stuart) missing their default
router information. The machines have been taken care of but it is something to
watch for.

(Larry)
- Worked a number of network issues in Bridge and went over some of the issues
with Steve and Alan at the 40M.
- Working some maint. contracts with SUN.
- After discussions with Barry and Gary we've decided to mount the projectors in
the conference rooms and we will purchase a few portable units to help
accommodate the needs for conferences.
- Working on Ultra 10 installations and testing some of the hardware.

LIGO II/Advanced R&D (Sanders)

From Riccardo DeSalvo:

All SURFERS leaving.  Good luck.
The lab will be emptier next week!
 

Francesco, Soy
Acoustic emission noise levels checked.
Developing triggering scheme of average HF/LF ratio.
Need to estimate actual noise levels.
 

Akiteru
After the good IP pendulum new oil bearing pump problems,  need to fix
before arrival of new counterweights.
IP flex joints that were at 9 mm (zero frequency for >200Kg load) have
been modified to 8 mm (obtaining 175 mHz  frequency at ~120Kg nominal
load) and will be modified to 7.3 mm (to obtain zero frequency for
~120Kg load).  This will happen after counterweight tests.
 

James (left, report by Akiteru)
Performed test of double TAMA MGASF, will see results next week,
measurement, as expected, limited by accelerometer sensitivity at ?80
dB.
 

Brett (left, report by Virginio)
PCB board finished plus program compiled.
 

Lisa (left, report by Francesco)
Need dedicated R?O station, system presently cannibalised.  Achieved 1
um stability in LVDTs.
 

Ruggero, Giovanni, Virginio
Setup of Virgo’s accelerometers on LIGO IP completed.  Starting Inertial
damping on complete IP plus 2 GASF tower.  Will make accelerometer
inertialdamping without including the LVDTs for a first step.
 

Alessandro, Carlo.
Finally found the problem with the monolithic accelerometer
construction.
After breaking many tools in drilling and tapping the mechanics and
wasting ages in EDM the drill bit corpses out of it, they passed to the
final milling and immediately discovered the problem.  The tools did not
break because of material hardness (as speculated so far).  The forged
material is full of internal cracks (we paid a bundle for material
certified free of defects from the most prestigious German firm) because
of insufficient forging.
As the defects are in the core, far from the flex joints, we will finish
the parts and temporarily use the accelerometers while we will get
replacements from the material provider (and damages, the material was
certified).
 

Susha, Giancarlo
After some corrections, freeing some parameter and inserting the
physical shape and the physical boundary conditions the simulation
starts giving physical responses, still some problems.
 
 

From: Helena Armandula <ahelena@ligo.caltech.edu>

Silica Bonding
I met in Stanford with Sheila Rowan and J. Hough.
We discussed surface preparation prior to bonding.
Cleanliness of the surface before bonding seems to be closely tied to bond strength.
Investigated several cleaning methods:
Cleaning with warm Liquinox; cleaning with Micro 90 at different temperatures; scrubbing the surface with cerium oxide; scrubbing with calcium carbonate.
All these methods clean the glass efficiently, allowing  the water to sheet-off the surface, however, the scrubbing with cerium oxide and calcium carbonate achieve the results in minutes instead of the long hour the detergents take.
We made some bonds at Caltech using calcium carbonate to clean the surfaces; some minor degradation of the surface was observed in two substrates out of eight, after cleaning.
Scratches do not affect bonds as long as flatness is preserved.
The bonds will be tested after some curing period.
This scrubbing method looks very promising to clean the flats on the mirrors because it would be very difficult to clean those surfaces any other way.

From: Phil Willems <willems@ligo.caltech.edu>
Fused silica fibers/ribbons:
----------------------------

We have measured the dependence of the Young's modulus on temperature for
Suprasil fused silica by analysis of the free oscillations of a fiber at
various temperatures.  The fractional change in the Young's modulus is
+1.52e-4/K.  This data will be used to design the optimum fiber/ribbon
dimensions for the suspensions in light of the nonlinear thermoelastic
noise. (Phil Willems, Virginio Sannibale)

From: Janeen Hazel <romie_j@ligo.caltech.edu>

Working on Advanced LIGO issues.
Working on 40m Upgrade.
 

From: Sam Richman <srichman@ligo.mit.edu>
Stiff isolation system (Sam Richman, Wensheng Hua)
 

We have tested a controller in which the vertical signals are used to subtract out a tilt component from horizontal seismometers at low frequencies (~30 to 500 mHz).  The vertical signals can come from either position sensors or seismometers.  The tilt cancellation was measured and can be done quite accurately.  This has allowed us for the first time to close all of the upper stage loops with position sensors and broadband seismometers.

From MIKE SMITH:
LIGO 2

Scattered Light Requirements:
A preliminary scattered light requirement for LIGO 2 was completed, based on the LIGO 1 interferometer configuration; the requirement will be revised to incorporate the LIGO 2 gravity wave signal transfer functions.

Conceptual Design:
Preliminary conceptual designs for the ETM telescope, PO/APS telescope, suspended arm cavity baffle, and all other pick-off optical path elements and light control elements were completed.

From PETER KING:

3.1 LIGO II PSL
        Some modifications to the draft PSL schedule have been made to
explicitly call out a few tasks, procurement of electronics components in
particular.

A start has been made on the PSL development plan.

Characterization of the pump diodes for the Stanford slab amplifier has
begun.  The pump diode assembly consists of 24 30-W pump diodes, each with
their own thermo-electric cooler (TEC).  Each TEC controls the pump diode's
temperature such that its emission wavelength is optimized for maximum
absorption by the Nd:YAG gain medium.  Every pump diode is being temperature
mapped.  Each diode temperature is stored so that when time comes to run
the amplifier, each diode will be operating at its optimum temperature.
This work is being carried out with Todd Rutherford and Shally Saraf.

For additional information about this report, contact sanders@ligo.caltech.edu